A subversive novel for a socialist Germany
Stefan Heym; Schwarzenberg. Pub; Bertelsmann, Munich, 1984. Peter Bartelheimer "YOU NEED the most powerful sort of telescope, the polished lens of utopian vision, to see even what is directly ahead." (Ernst Bloch)
Both German states, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), are the fruits of a liberation from fascism what was not accomplished by their people with their own strength. Neither occupier brought the freedom it promised. Both imposed their own sort of liberation and for their own ends.
Forced to flee Germany in 1933 to escape Hitler, Stefan Heym returned as an officer in the US forces in 1945. Then, after the Korean War, he went to the GDR. Thus, he chose his side consciously. But, while a prize winning author in the GDR, he has never ceased to quest for a political alternative to "actually existing socialism."
Heym's novel on the East Berlin workers uprising on June 17, 1953 (Fuenf Tage im Juni, "Five Days in June"), his literary settling of accounts with the Stalinist past (Collin) and with Stalinist falsification of history (Koenig-David-Bericht) have never appeared in the GDR. His most recent book, a novel subversive of both German states, Schwarzenberg, returns to the question that he left open in the novel he published in 1948, while still in the United States, which was entitled The Crusaders (Kreuzfahrer von heute). The question is the following. What might have happened if the Germans had been able to take advantage of the military collapse of fascism to liberate themselves?
The former District of Schwarzenberg in the Erzgebirge, today divided into four districts in the GDR, is the site of an historical utopia. The factual peg for the story is that for a few weeks in May 1945, Schwarzenberg was left unoccupied, as a result of a misunderstanding between the Soviet and American general staffs. During this time, it was administered by a provisional German civil authority. On this Heym builds a utopia in which fictional characters tell the "history" of the "Republic of Schwarzenberg"
and their own attempts to create democratic socialist relations on German soil.
Stefan Heym's utopia is concrete. It starts out from the actual situation at the end of May 1945 and is built up without shining heros. Everyone stands by and looks on as the Nazi functionaries flee. Everyone waits for the occupation, and hopes for nothing but from the occupiers. For occupation is "good for the spirit, a just punishment well merited." you term, "a foreign power saves you from confrontation with yourself." (P. 246) Most people pin their hopes on the Americans, who "brought more supplies with them" than the Russians, "as poor as they are uncivilized and unrestrained, and vengeful too."
"The possibility that no occupier at all would roll in is something no one thought about." (P.11)
Only two men had an idea about what to do with the power that was literally in the street. They are the big rivals in the short-lived republic. Max Wolfram, the author of a "Comparative Study of Utopian Thought," was freed from a death-row cell in a Nazi prison by the bombing of Dresden. He has returned to his home town, where his Jewish parents died.
On Wolfram's initiative, the Social Democratic and Communist workers assemble to form a common Action Committee. "On liberated soil, but without any pressure from foreign powers," he calls on them to take over the factories and the administration of the area.
Already at the first meeting, Erhard Reinsiepe, a Communist Party functionary before the war, starts to play his role. He speaks in obscure allusions of his "party work" in exile and about his excellent relations with the "Soviet friends" in the neighboring district. He also speaks in favor of forming an action committee, "not to couple socialism with democracy" but to hand over the district in good order to the coming occupier.
The Action Committee only has to threaten the Nazi mayor with its single machine gun to turn him out of the cityhall and lock him up together with the district leadership of the Nazi party. The district president, Wesseling, however, who still wants to obey the Nazi government of Saxony, which has fled, while at the same time pleading with the US army
International Viewpoint 11 November 1985
BOOK REVIEW to march in, is left in office for the time being.
This bloodless "seizure of power" is portrayed by Heym as a modest example for future experiments" in a country in which "people have not yet managed to lead a revolution to victory on their own power." In other places in the district, other action committees are formed which recognize the one in Schwarzenberg recognize the one in Schwarzenberg as authoritative.
A situation of dual power has arisen. In the district, the Action Committee confronts not only the district president, who for the time being presents himself as neutral," but also the "Stuelpnagel Fighting Group," a marauding gang left over from the defeated Hitler Wehrmacht, and the industrialist Muenchmeyer, who is hiding the wife of the fled Nazi party district leader.
On the Western "border" is Lieutenant Lambert of the US military government who wants to see "what these Germans can make of themselves and their country if they are left to themselves." (P. 96) But he shrinks from taking any responsibility. As a pragmatist, he knows that the American military authorities would "rather" support "any adventurer" than the Action Committee. (P. 238)
Cynically, he sneers at anybody like Wolfram because "he still sees a logic in historical development." (P. 118) He sentimentally limits himself to looking for a Jewish girl that he was in love with before the war as a student in Dresden.
On the Eastern border also, the "Schwarzenberg Republic" has only uncertain "allies." Captain Vorkutin, a Soviet officer faithful to the party line, is directing the activity of the Stalinist functionary Reinsiepe in the neighboring district.
On the other hand, Major Bogdanov, "the product of those dangerous years in which Soviet citizens, especially if they were functionaries or members of the intelligentsia, could not be sure where they would wake up in the morning - in bed, where they lay down to sleep, or in a cell in the nearest police station" (p. 209) -sympathizes with the Schwarzenberg experiment.
"One thing is clear for me, on the basis of what Lenin once said in fact, that revolutions cannot be exported. Every people must go its own way. We cannot impose a course of development on them, however practical that might seem." (P. 242)
In order to save Schwarzenberg's
"independence," Bogdanov even meets
Lieutenant Lambert secretly. Finally, a bullet from the "Stuelpnagel Fighting Group" saves him from the fate of being arrested by his own people as an agent.
In its short life, the Action Committee makes astounding accomplishments. The Gauleiter [Nazi district leader] is tracked down in the mountains and arrested. The foreign workers in the camps are organized. Their journey home ends in most cases, however, as we learn later, in new camps, this time Stalinist ones. The mail and the railroads are put back in operation. The products of the few factories are traded with the farmers. Food supply is organized.
Finally, even a police action against the "Stuelpnagel Fighting Group" is prepared jointly with the Soviet army. The action fails, however, because the "friends" do not want to share the military command with the Action Committee. When the Red
Army later breaks up the Stuelpnagel gang, this is only the overture to the occupation of Schwarzenberg.
Opposing the State of War in Poland and the suppression of Solidarnosc, Stefan Heym said at the beginning of 1982: "In general, it has to be considered what kind of socialism it can be when the army and other security bodies are sent to use armed force against the working class And since there is no reasonable ••. alternative to socialism ... it should be considered what changes should be made in the structure of this socialism so that finally a genuine socialism could emerge from what actually exists, a socialism with which the workers could identify." (Frankfurter Rundschau, January 14, 1982).
In the center of the novel is a chapter in which Wolfram drafts a "Constitution of the Republic of Schwarzenberg." Here the influence of the first Solidarnosc program is as unmistakable as the biting criticism of the state's "socialism" in the GDR.
Wolfram knows that once again he is writing a "utopian work." But he goes about this not as an intellectual but as a socialist in action. It is part of his "new tasks." (P. 81) His "Republic of Schwarzenberg" is to be ruled by a "Council of Deputies," whose members are elected by the Action Committee and subject to recall. (P. 141)
The new administration is supposed to have no chairpersons, no parades, and no bureaucracy. "Offices remain offices, and desks and the chairs behind them, along with their conveniences and privileges mould people much more than any other tools of work." (P. 55)
Therefore, equality plays a big role in the constitution: 'There are no small privileges, neither in the use of public property nor of state power. Citizens in public service regard themselves as servants of the people, not as its masters. And their renumeration 26 in no case exceeds that of workers in production." (P. 139)
Instead of a professional army and a professional police, there is only a workers militia. The factories are to be administered as social property by elected factory councils (which in turn will elect the factory management and together with it order the internal affairs of the factory, regulate wages, and supervise production." (P.145)
Large land holdings are also to become community property. Small and middle peasant holdings, however, will remain private property until the peasants themselves voluntarily form cooperatives.
"Everyone has the right to join with others to further his or her legitimate interests. The right to strike must remain inviolate. All must be free to travel where they choose." Judges are to be elected, and court hearings are to be open to the public. "The privacy of correspondence is guaranteed, and there is no censorship."
Reinsiepe counterposes his Stalinist credo to Wolfram's utopia: "One thing this Hitler has shown. It is that the people's instinct is not to be trusted. Therefore, it is the duty of those who do have true consciousness to bring this people under discipline, Unerring and undivertible, they must lead it and drive it constantly forward, even with a club when the power of reason fails." (P. 251)
Finally, the real starting point of contemporary German history reasserts itself. The Soviet army puts an end to Schwarzenberg's independence. The ceremonial transfer of powers takes place in the villa of the industrialist Muenchmeyer, where the Twelfth World Congress resolutions now available This special issue of International Viewpoint contains the resolutions adopted by the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International in January/February 1985.
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district president, Wesseling, pledges to collaborate loyally with the occupiers. Vorkutin and Reinsiepe arrest Wolfram, after he has rejected an offer from Lambert to leave with the Americans.
Today, Schwarzenberg is in the firm grip of Wismut, who under strict security regulations and the command of a Soviet general director mines uranium for the Soviet Union.
As Stefan Heym says with an ironic hint in his preface: "When I think how differently the history of the republic could have been if the Americans had known what lay under the ground of Schwarzenberg' " (P.10)
With the same irony, he presents Wolfram in his epilogue as a professor at the University of Leipzig. In his seminar on "Social Structures in Utopian Societies," is the son of a colleague from the Schwarzenberg Action Committee. Wolfram has given in. Socialism has "finally developed from a utopia to a science."
"Schwarzenberg was a great illusion."
His student contradicts him. "No one is asking you, Herr Professor, to wave any flag, after all that you went through in prison, in a cell on death row, and in the long time that you spent out there with our friends. But leave us the dream - and the flag."
"You are a utopian'" Wolfram answers. And he laughs ambiguously: "If we don't stop here, things could become unpleasant." (P. 310)
Needless to say, this novel by Stefan Heym could not be published In the GDR. Needless to say, Wolfram's question to Reinsiepe remains intolerable: "Who will be judged in the right by the inexorable court of history?" (P. 296) Inte rationa TEMPOINT Resplutions pi the c Twelfth t Congress of the Fourth Intentional
E C E International Viewpoint 11 November 1985